Creating clarity from confusion

To the post office, it's just Compton. To the U.S. Census Bureau, it's no place at all, an orphaned pocket of houses too small even to have a name.

But to the three women chatting outside their homes on neatly trimmed Zamora Avenue, their unincorporated area of a dozen blocks entirely inside Compton is a world unto itself.

They call it Rosewood.

"This is a real neighborhood," said Virginia McCarter, a resident for more than 37 years. "If I won the lottery, I wouldn't move. I'm serious."

This tiny dot on the map is one example of the bramble of boundaries, names and geographical features that makes Los Angeles County a place of confounding lines.

Monday, The Times is launching a new electronic map designed to render these lines into a semblance of order.

From 16 regions that define major geographic and social subdivisions of L.A. County to the smallest unincorporated island — a mere city block — the map brings 314 identifiable places into an interactive whole.

It shows what those neighborhoods look like from a satellite view, gives information from the U.S. Census, pinpoints schools, providing information from state tests, and gives news about the surrounding region.

It also provides a comment box where neighbors — whether they be next door or miles across the desert — can share experiences, recollections and viewpoints about where they live. They also can set us straight if they think we're wrong.

The new county map is an expansion of Mapping L.A., The Times' project to break the city of Los Angeles into 114 neighborhoods, for the first time providing interactive demographics, school and, soon, crime data down to the local level.

Drawing lines between neighborhoods was a perilous endeavor that earned us both criticism and praise.

The countywide map, we've found, is equally vexing, but with a flavor of its own.

One of its uniquely exasperating features is the pattern of holes left by about 40 nameless fragments of real estate bypassed as cities formed around them. Some are squeezed between two cities, others, like Zamora Avenue, are surrounded by a city but not part of it.

A story — possibly apocryphal — is told by the director of the Royal Oaks Manor retirement home in unincorporated Bradbury that suggests the historical void from which these areas arise.

Surrounded by Bradbury's majestic horse properties, Royal Oaks is an anomaly, a swank, high-density home for 250 residents.

According to Royal Oaks director Melody Mitchell, a former neighbor told her that the former owner of the property was ostracized after he blocked the opening of a restaurant across the street. When the area was being incorporated as Bradbury in the 1950s, the neighbors managed to exclude him.

Mitchell said Bradbury then tried to block development of the multistory brick building amid its horse properties but was unsuccessful.

Despite its colorful provenance, the orphan piece of Bradbury has no name. County planners include it in an archipelago of county outcrops stretching from Bradbury to San Gabriel under the catch-all name "South Monrovia Islands."

The Times has adopted a simpler convention, using the name of the associated city with each county island and a compass direction in cases where multiple islands exist on different sides of a city. Since the areas are too small to support their own statistics, The Times has added their populations into the associated city. We also provide links to separate maps to show where the islands are.

Though absorbing those areas into the surrounding cities might be beneficial for public services — not to mention convenient for mapping — there's little chance that will happen. According to the Los Angeles County Local Agency Formation Commission, the agency that oversees incorporation matters, no county islands have been annexed in at least the last decade and no changes are being planned.

Neither the cities nor the residents, it turns out, are much interested.

Like many a "county" resident, Dennis Woy, who has lived for 38 years in unincorporated Claremont, professed a stubborn attachment to life without overnight parking restrictions, sidewalks, sewers and the higher taxes that go with them.

Several residents in Woy's neighborhood said representatives of Claremont have tested the waters for annexation, but the homeowners have voted them down.

"I've never wanted to be a part of the city," Woy said.

San Gabriel planner Mark Gallatin said his city was no more eager to gobble up new turf.

"Neighborhoods use more in services than make money for the city," Gallatin said. "It's not an economic interest."

Besides the nameless islands, the Mapping L.A. project includes about 50 non-cities that are recognized either by the U.S. Census Bureau or L.A. County planners as places. These include the venerable East L.A., the hip Topanga, Stevenson Ranch in the Santa Clarita Valley and the obscure Sun Village near Palmdale.

We've included them all as neighborhoods, bringing the total to 272, including the 114 of Los Angeles.

With few exceptions, we've adopted the "official" names, a decision that may be a bitter pill for the women of Zamora Avenue. Though the Thomas Guide identifies the unincorporated area west of Compton as Rosewood, both the Census Bureau and L.A. County call it simply West Compton

Fitting L.A.'s diverse geography into regions was our final challenge.

"Where does the Westside end?" we had to ask ourselves. "Or begin?" Our line included Culver City but left out West Hollywood. Set us straight if you disagree.

Most of L.A. County's diverse geography fits into convenient pieces such as the Antelope Valley and Angeles Forest.

But one sticking point was the interplay of contour and culture where the two lower valleys meet.

Are Glendale and Pasadena the bookends of the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys, or cornerstones of an arch rising through the Verdugo Mountains with La Cañada Flintridge as its keystone?

The arch won us over, prompting the need to coin a new name. Central Highlands didn't ring, so we went with the Spanish rancho flair and named it the Verdugos. If you have a better idea, we're listening.